I feel like I've been plagued with tire vibration issues on this XJ since I bought it. Over 3 sets of tires, it seems like it has never really been as smooth as I expect. Currently running Pirelli Cinturato P7, have about 30k miles and halfway through their tread life. Have no issues with abnormal wear.

Just had the tires rotated @ 7500 miles, immediately had a vibration in the steering wheel. Did some testing and swapped the front/rear tires on each side to isolate the offending wheel. Found that I could most definitely move the vibration from the steering wheel to the floorboard by swapping the passenger side. Took it back to my tire dealer (Discount Tire, who have always done a superb job), asked them to rebalance the bad one and check road force. I asked them to look carefully at the rim, and if it was bent or wacky I'd find a replacement. He told me the road force machine would easily ID a bent rim. Okay...

So they rebalance the one and put it back to the front. Said it was only out 1/4 ounce. They didn't notice anything abnormal. I gave it a try today. It's noticeably smoother, but the steering wheel vibration is back. This particular tire required very little weight to balance, maybe 1 or 2 of the stick-on weights.

Questions:
1. Should I try to take it somewhere else for a balance?
2. Should I just have the tire dismounted and measure runout on the rim? I don't think I can measure radial runout with the tire in place.... might this be an issue with lateral runout? Could try and measure at the face of the rim.
3. What are the radial and lateral runout specs? I can't find any reference in the x350 service manual.

Just want a smooth highway ride... I have had 2 Chevys come and go in the same timeframe as this Jag and both of those were way smoother on the highway.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

These wheels bend easy. Maybe a place that straightens them can help you. Try to find a place that actually straightens the wheel. If the service center only sends off to be straightened it may not require fixing.
The flat bottomed lugnuts are another potential. They do not center the wheel like beveled nuts. But Toyota uses the same design with no vibration.

 

Even a "road force balancer" will not always detect slightly bent wheels in my experience. ( A side note: I am VERY fussy about highway smoothness so we are talking about very minor vibrations that most people wouldn't notice) A pothole can cause a slight bulge along the edge of the rim and the damage can be very difficult to see. I live in NY so of course all of our cars have had to have rims straightened - sometimes several times in one year. Luckily the local wheel place is competent AND they have their own Hunter balancer so when they are done the results are excellent. That said, even a Chevy on new straight rims and tires will be smoother than a 15 year old Jag that has had it's wheels straightened multiple times. I find that bent rims cause a particular kind of shudder that is different than bad balancing. I never feel it through the wheel and the buzzing often comes and goes mysteriously. Moving the wheel around from corner to corner just seems to confuse things further.

So my advice is take the car to a wheel refurb specialist and have all 4 rims checked and straightened (and refinished if the bends are bad enough).

Jeff

 

Thanks for the replies. I did some quick measurements with my dial indicator on the face of the front rims, one measures 10-15 thousands lateral runout, the suspect one measures 30 thou. I couldn't find the Jag spec on runout, but Hyundai cites 12 thousands as the limit for radial and lateral runout on their alloy rims. I'm sure the 30 thou is the issue. Talked to a local wheel shop that can straighten them, will get the car over there in the next few weeks. Will probably have them refinish all 4 rims since the barrels are in such worn out shape. Hopefully this resolves my issue!

 

I think you are on the right track. My problematic wheels have all had a local "pothole" bend in the rim that caused vibrations. Many times the bend is on the INSIDE edge of the rim so you won't even see it with an indicator on the outside face. One other thing I meant to bring up is tire pressures. When I bought my car the guy had the tires at 40 psi and it rode like ****. The recommendation on the door (even with the 19" rims) is 32 psi. Obviously lower pressure makes you more vulnerable to potholes, but it improves everything else including minor vibrations. To me the improvement in ride quality is worth the trade off.

Jeff

 

Also... the damage I've seen is MUCH larger than 0.030". I'm talking about a BEND of at least 0.10". Usually you can see it with your naked eye if you look hard enough.

 

Makes one wonder if they make a set of steel rims that fit.
Almost certain that they have to cross to some other vehicle.
Maybe a Crown Vic, Lincoln, or a pickup.
Not near as attractive but a lot stronger as well less expensive.

 

That is one thing that makes me wonder if the rims even need straightening. I'll have to find out if they could even straighten them to that small a tolerance. I definitely do not have severe enough damage to see with the eye... I've watched the inside and outside rim edges while rotating the tire, also checked the tire for blisters, etc, there's nothing I can see. I'm wondering if the issue is tire mounting/balance. Supposedly my tire shop is using a Hunter road force balancer, but I know that's only as good as the technician running it. If they indexed the tire on the rim maybe it would give a better result.

Also, I know my measurement was a quick-n-dirty way to check, it should be measured with the tire dismounted at the inside of the wheel where the bead seals. I'm going to look into a few options. At the least I want to have the wheel shop take a look at it and measure the runout properly.

 

Nowhere on this thread do I see the mileage on the car. It could be the wheel bearings in the hubs are worn out, assuming the road wheels are good and true ot course. Other thing not mentioned is the wheel size. Large wheels and very low profile tyres are very unforgiving of the slightest anomaly anywhere in the suspension as there is no absorption of normal road vibration.
So - are these 20" wheels ?

 

130k miles, 18" Tucana wheels. It's not a front suspension issue, if I rotate the suspect wheel to the rear the vibration in the steering wheel goes away.

 

So it is one or both wheels, but which one !! 18" Tucana wheels have reasonable profile wheels, so it must be either tyre or wheel. What you might try is buy another Tucana wheel on the internet, and swap it with one then the other. This sort of thing can be a real PITA to sort out.

Anyway, having got the wheels on the rear, and no vibration through the steering wheel, what now happens, vibration somwhere else, I assume ?

 

Update: I was finally able to get my offending front wheel to a specialty rim shop. He took a look at it and in 30 seconds showed me the tire was out of round and the rim was fine. The computer readout quantified the tire radial runout at 0.035 inch, with the inside of the rim having a runout of only 0.005 inch. Rim is as close to perfect as Jag could have made it. However, just watching the tire rotate around slowly you can see it bounce up and down. Two distinct marks on the tread where it has been wearing incorrectly.

Dug up my tire receipts, this set of Cinturato P7s was put on the car in May 2016 with 99k miles. Next invoice was from January 2017 where I took it back complaining of a highway vibration at 104k miles. It seems like this tire was out of round since day 1. But apparently it was on the rear of the car initially so I didn't notice it until it got rotated to the front. Currently at 133k miles.

Took it back to the tire dealer, he is warrantying it 100%. However the tires have approx 35k miles and 50% life on them. Matching a 50% tire with a 100% tire is going to keep me up at night... so I'm going to have him get a 2nd new one. Will trash the out of round tire, and keep the other 50% tire as a spare in case one of the other 2 self destructs. Although I hate the idea of buying tires piecemeal, I think this will be the best solution.

I have to say, I need to remember to never buy Pirelli tires again. I have had nothing but issues with them. My last set on this car were PZero Nero, at least 2 were replaced under warranty for out of round defects within 15k miles, and by 30k miles they were trashed. The only reason I went with the Cinturatos was because they were prorated so much from the old set. And my tire guy assured me these P7s would work better.

It's sad that this tire shop has gone downhill in service. 3 times they road force balanced and told me the tire was perfect. If they had just looked at it they would have seen the issue. And twice now I've found chips in my rim paint where they've chucked the wheel into the balance machine. Too many strikes against them at this point... time for me to find a new tire shop.

 

The best tyres I had for my car were Kumho's. I had Continental's and Pirelli's and the Kumho's outlasted them by a long way. I had two sets last over 35K miles each time whereas the other brands where trashed by about 20K miles. And I work for one of those other tyre manufacturers as well !

 

Michelin makes good tires, not much else good to say about the French.
But Michelin tires, for bikes, cars, and The French Foreign Legion, kick ***.

 

Don’t forget the French Riviera! Homer... MMMM topless women!

 

OK but thats a place.

 

Good find. I had a bad set of pirellis on my hellcat from day 1 took months of balancing and rebalancing it before they discovered the tires were out of round and warrantied them

 

This is what annoys me the most. I went back 3 times in 3 weeks for these front tires vibrating and every time they told me "it's balanced perfectly". I don't understand how a tire "expert" wouldn't have taken a look at the wheel spinning and seen this after the 2nd complaint.

I'm thinking this out of round defect had to have been there since they were new, or close to new, since I started having vibration issues around 5k miles. I have no idea if these are things that happen over time or if it was just defective out of the box.

No more Pirelli tires for me--ever. Although the tread wear on these have been excellent, I can't stand vibrations. My father has had excellent results with Michelin on his car, and I have a set of their Eco tires on my Volt. They are still with the factory balance @ 30k miles and riding extremely smooth.

 

same story as me!

 

some of you may recall a very similar issue i had with a used XJL that i had recently purchased.

• during the drive home, felt VERY bad vibration at 65+mph (unfortunately i never reached those speeds during the test drive, my fault)
• noticed that the tires were over-inflated (40 psi)....lowered to 32....still bad vibration (car had OEM pirelli, may have had flatspots)
• ordered brand new Conti DWS (from tire rack)....installed at Mavis Discount Tire....STILL had bad vibration....they tell me the rims look great and it could be bad axles
• took the car to a shop with road force balancer....they tell me the tires are bad, rims are ok
• ordered a set of new Conti's again....mounted.....tested....still tested high, still a lot of vibration
• Now i am losing my mind......took the car to jaguar to test with a completely different set of wheels to make sure that it was infact the rims and not mechanical.......jaguar says 100% its the rims
• fought with tire rack, had them send me michilens.....mounted....tested....MUCH better feeling. still measured high road force, but the car drove better

im convinced that this machine does not measure rim run out well. I am dealing with the slight vibration for now until things settle down. the last thing i want to do is send my rims out to a shop and then they close for covid reasons and i cant get the car back for weeks